The Social Distance Between Us: How Remote Politics Wrecked Britain

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Examining class inequalities in areas such as education, housing, labour and more, the author also examines the increasingly polarised political stances that are leading to an ever more divided world. When it comes to the haves and the have-nots in Britain, you don’t have to look far to see the damage. I'm not sure about making voting mandatory, but I do believe that our politicians need more real life experience before carving out a career in politics. The problem was also that the managers coordinating the building works (and the housing officers involved) regarded most of the tenants as an alien species, beneath their contempt and only out to screw the system and claim compensation.

McGarvey also asks potent questions about the links between our school systems and a low-end labour market millions of us are only too happy to take advantage of, with barely a thought for the iniquities it perpetuates: “If young people from poorer communities didn’t drop out of school early or fail to achieve high enough grades to go straight to university,” he asks, “then who would do those low-paid, precarious jobs? And why if you have a system that can profit from misery, then the system won’t really want it to stop. I thought I wasn't judgemental but it has even changed the way I think about certain things in life and making me more understanding of issues people experience. My dole has always seemed generous because, because of my education, I can live well within my means. In 2022, he is due to release his new book The Social Distance Between Us: How Remote Politics Wrecked Britain – the follow-up to his bestselling and acclaimed debut, Poverty Safari, which received the Orwell Prize.He occasionally tumbles into suggestions of a stark divide between working-class angels and toffee-nosed villains, as when he makes the improbable claim that imperialism, racism and sexism were “all ideas either dreamed up or imported from overseas by highly educated, sophisticated and wealthy individuals”. Where education is concerned, McGarvey says, ‘inequality is written into the … system’s DNA’, adding that private schools are a catastrophe for social equality. He spun tales of a long-vanished working class community, which stood tall and proud because it knew it was the backbone of the country.

As someone with long term health issues I live it but it still surprised me how insidious class privilege is in twenty-first century Britain. Often, the parts that irritate me most are the ones that keep me consuming, just as the points I take greatest issue with are the ones I find myself thinking about long after I am done. And with the direct encounters and personal experiences underpinning his arguments, he makes no end of astute points. That makes it an uncomfortable read for any middle-class person, since it's the middle class who takes the brunt of Garvey's assignment of blame.

His dismissal of their woolly liberalism, and their distance from the grinding reality of poverty, is full of sweeping generalisations. If you’re expecting a raging takedown of one political party over another, the author asks that you put your factionalism aside. There's good analysis of the roots of Brexit, the use and misuse of populism, and a lot more besides. The city, he muses, may well be Scotland’s most beautiful metropolis, where “beams reflect off the granite, rendering even the most ordinary building prestigious and majestic”.